Three years ago, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered an unpublished manuscript, The Bondwoman's Narrative, By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Recently Escaped From North Carolina, which turned out to be the first novel by a female African-American slave ever found, and possibly the first novel written by a black women anywhere. The Bondwoman's Narrative was published in 2002. In Search of Hannah Crafts now brings together twenty-two authorities on African-American studies to examine such issues as authenticity, and the history and criticism of this unique novel, including Nina Baym, Jean Fagan...

A landmark account of the African American experience during the Civil War and its aftermath
First published in 1892, this stirring novel by the great writer and activist Frances Harper tells the story of the young daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter who travels to the North to attend school, only to be sold into slavery in the South when it is discovered that she has Negro blood. After she is freed by the Union army, she works to reunify her family and embrace her heritage, committing herself to improving the conditions for blacks in America.
Through her fascinating...

A landmark collection documenting the social, political, and artistic lives of African American women throughout the tumultuous nineteenth century

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education,...